Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley (12 June 1819 – 23 January 1875) was a broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism, the working men's college, and forming labour cooperatives, which failed, but encouraged later working reforms.
For the British yacht designer, see Charles Kingsley (yacht designer). For the English tennis player, see Charles Kingsley (tennis).Racial views[edit]
Anglo-Saxonism[edit]
Kingsley was a fervent Anglo-Saxonist,[18] and was seen as a major proponent of the ideology, particularly in the 1840s.[19] He proposed that the English people were "essentially a Teutonic race, blood-kin to the Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians".[20] Kingsley suggested there was a "strong Norse element in Teutonism and Anglo-Saxonism".
Mixing mythology and Christianity, he blended Protestantism as it was practised at the time with the Old Norse religion, saying that the Church of England was "wonderfully and mysteriously fitted for the souls of a free Norse-Saxon race". He believed the ancestors of Anglo-Saxons, Norse and Germanic peoples had physically fought beside the god Odin, and that the British monarchy was genetically descended from the god.[21]
Dislike of the Irish[edit]
Kingsley has been accused of intensely antagonistic views of the Irish,[16] whom he described in derogatory terms.[22][23]
Visiting County Sligo in Ireland, he wrote a letter to his wife from Markree Castle in 1860: "I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country [Ireland]... [for] to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours."[24][25]
